"Yes," he answered. "We've got ter push back. It's a good three mile."
"But we can't push back," Silk protested. "There's not time, and we shall not have enough steam. There's the limited express to think of. How far on is the next water plug?"
"'Bout the same distance," Dick told him. "We're half ways between."
"Then we'll pull ahead," decided the sergeant.
"She'll bust, sure, if we do," declared Joe Halkett, rousing himself to a realisation of the situation. "Thar' ain't enough power ter carry her through, draggin' such a weight, and, say, thar's no switch near hand, where we kin side-track ter let the limited run past."
The train had stopped. Sergeant Silk stood still, hardly daring to take the responsibility. But even in the matter of managing an engine he proved himself to be a person of ready resource. He whistled for the conductor.
"Jump down and cut the engine loose, Dick," he ordered. And without questioning the motive, Dick obeyed.
By the time that the engine and tender had been uncoupled from the foremost car, the guard had come through the corridors from the brake van to know what had happened.
"All right; don't alarm the passengers," cried Silk. "We're short of water. We've run past the plug. I'm going on with the engine alone to the next plug to get some. Climb up to the roof of the head car with a lamp and signal us back, see?"
Leaving the conductor to guess how it chanced that the locomotive was in charge of a sergeant of police, he opened the throttle valve and started off along the line at the highest speed that he could get out of the cranky old kettle, arriving at the hydrant with an empty tank and a dangerously exhausted boiler.